


Goals

by Jake_the_space_cat



Series: A Creature of Pride (transmasc!Kim AU) [11]
Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Addiction, Alcoholism, Apartments, Cat, Cats, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Domesticity, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Idk I choose to believe fighter aircraft have wings, M/M, Pets, Possibly Pre-Slash, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Precinct 41 - Freeform, Recovery, Sobriety, Trans Kim Kitsuragi, Trans Male Character, do aircraft in DE have wings, or are they like blimps, partners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:55:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29973561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jake_the_space_cat/pseuds/Jake_the_space_cat
Summary: You've got to have something to work towards.Harry gets to see Kim's apartment for the first time. They've already worked together for more than a year.
Relationships: Harry Du Bois/Kim Kitsuragi
Series: A Creature of Pride (transmasc!Kim AU) [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2160411
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	Goals

**Author's Note:**

> Luc is Eyes' actual name, in this AU. Several stories of mine so far deal with his death.
> 
> I write out of order, so I've got [a masterlist of chronology for all of my DE pieces here](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12Mfej90pwfLsLANPI3nuLRqnoAc8u3DW1vgy3icTK-w/edit#gid=0). The continuity will be screwy occasionally, as I have no master plan. Someday, I'll go back and shine up continuity! Maybe.

You’d constructed a mental image - a _mind palace,_ you might say - of what you thought a Kim-curated apartment might look like. You’re pleased to see you weren't far off - there’s the obsessive neatness, the clever use of a Jamrock studio’s very little available space, the organized bookcase with rows of neat notebooks (some blue, some red, some yellow) and mechanics’ manuals, a desk (and combination drafting table - you should have seen that coming, but didn’t), a pegboard over the desk covered with tools, a handful of photos and pieces of memorabilia (TipTop, Revolutionary, RCM) scattered on shelves and hung here and there on the walls. There’s the bare-bones kitchen area in the corner, meticulously clean but almost unused-looking. An electric kettle on the tiny counter. The working remote-controlled aeronautic models suspended from the ceiling on hooks and wires. 

There are a few surprises. You think you see some old war comics and the complete collection of the original _MacAngus_ series (the adventure novels on which the long-running classic milieu is based) close to the bottom of the bookshelf. The tiny tank of - they're fish of some kind, apparently you don't know much about fish - on a stand under the loft bed seems uncharacteristically impractical, and you weren’t _absolutely_ certain he’d keep the model kit boxes and display them, but there they--

Wait.

Hold on.

“Hey.” You squat down, hands on your knees. “Hey, look at you. What a pretty little kitty. Look at you. _Such_ a pretty little kitty.”

Kim glances over at you from his desk. He’s already found what he was looking for - an extra power source for the Frelon D15 (31-inch wingspan) that he’s planning to fly today. Over the past few months, he’s taken you out to several abandoned areas and open parks both in and around the city - nominally to show you features of Revachol you may have forgotten but actually to show off his toys. (You didn't need your incredible powers of psychological insight to figure _that_ out.) 

HIs memory has been worse since the concussion. Occasionally, you're all ready to head out before he realizes he's left something in his apartment. This is the first time he’s allowed you to follow him up when he goes to retrieve whatever it might be.

“Who’s this? Who’s this little--?” The tiny white cat has already jumped down from the table under the loft bed and is padding over, tail high, to inspect your outstretched hand. (Hold on - she was _on the table?_ Kim lets his cat sit _on the table?_ ) “Is she a girl?”

“She’s a cat.” Kim slips the battery into one of the five pockets in his off-duty jacket. As far as you can tell, it’s the same as his on-duty jacket, except this one he wears unreversed, sage-green side out. It also has a military patch on the left breast with the name "GUYNEMER" - an ace Revolutionary pilot known for confident reserve beyond his years.

You click your tongue at the cat as she carefully sniffs the tips of your fingers. You’re not looking his way any longer, but you feel Kim relent.

“Her name is Fleur.” 

"I didn’t think you’d be a pet person.” Fleur rubs her cheek along your hand. You scratch it, and she stretches out her throat, asking for more. “Unless you count the models. And the MC.” (It's not the Kineema, but Kim and his patrol car have already formed a deep, spiritual bond.) You click at the cat again. “Hey, Fleur. Heeeey, Fleur.”

She falls over and flips around on the floor, upside-down.

Kim takes you off guard. He doesn't stand there another long second, deciding whether to respond and opting for "no." Instead, he walks over to squat down next to you, joining you in considering the relaxed little cat. Who promptly flips herself upright and bops up to stand on her back feet and push her head against his chin before falling back onto all fours. He rubs a thumb along the bridge of her nose and across her forehead and then falls into the rhythm of stroking her. She begins to purr at a volume you’re not sure you’ve ever heard a cat manage before.

(You’re really not sure. You didn’t even know you liked cats. Or knew what to do with them.) 

“She belonged to a partner of mine.”

“Eyes?” It doesn’t take much effort to make that connection.

His hand stills on the cat’s back. She flips over and grabs his hand in her front feet, trying to reach her back feet up high enough to kick at his fingers - rescuing his hand gives him an excuse to look at her and not at you. “You _would_ remember that.” His voice drops, and his next sentence seems directed more to himself. “Always that nose for _trauma._ ”

You tweak the very tip of Fleur's tail lightly, distracting her long enough for Kim to extricate his hand with minimal loss of blood. 

“Luc.” He chooses to continue - not that he has _much_ choice, now that he's volunteered enough to give you fodder for questions - as Fleur goes back to flipping around happily on her back between the two of you. You reach out now and then to poke one or the other of the pads of her back feet. She flails around more and slaps at you without bothering to right herself. “His name was Luc Mauger. Eighteen years with the RCM. We worked together for over a year.”

You can sense in his stillness that he's feeling his way forward carefully. Deciding how much to share now and how much to hold back until you manage to say the right thing again at the right moment. He's deliberately avoiding some of his usual techniques for buying time - removing his glasses to clean them or pushing them meticulously further up his nose. They're transparent tells to anyone who’s worked with him for even a few hours (at least, _you_ think they are), and he’s learned avoiding them around you saves time.

He makes a decision, and abandons his other distancing technique - the averted gaze. His eye contact now is steady and deliberate.

“He died of a pyr overdose.”

_Oh._

You rapidly replay every moment in the pawnshop back in Martinaise. The owner’s obvious addiction. Your immediate memory of that intense overload of sensory information that only pyr gives you, like a warm bath made of sweet psychic insight and liquid sunlight. You remember asking Roy about his supply. Wanting it. This close to taking some. Except that Kim was there.

Watching. Very quietly. Not about to be disappointed by you or frustrated by you. But about to accept something, within himself.

You hadn’t been awake enough to the world to know _what_ , not then.

But now you have what you need to parse it out.

Those were the eyes of a man about to accept that he could no longer care. He might have been helping you, might have been deciding you could be worth trusting, over the course of the day, yes, but that no longer mattered. He was about to accept that he had made a mistake. Been too idealistic again. About to accept that, no, he really couldn’t go through this a second time.

If you had taken the pyr, he'd have cut himself off from you and gone through the rest of the investigation showing you compassion but nothing more, no promises, no encouragement, no hope for your future. He would have led you through the investigation like an orderly leading a dementia victim through the hallways of a psych ward, where their family members have had them temporarily stored away for convenience’s sake. He'd have kept you safe. Got you where you needed to be. But not expected you to ever be more than the emptied-out vessel that stumbled down the stairs of the Whirling early that first morning.

Fleur interrupts the long silent moment with a loud “MWEH.” The “mweh” is accompanied by putting her front paws on one of your knees and shoving herself in your face.

Reflexively, you scratch the back of her neck with one hand.

Kim surprises you again. He reaches out and takes your other hand, squeezes it.

“MWEH-EH,” Fleur complains, as your scratching hand pauses.

He releases your hand, stands up, dusts off the knees of his pants (a near-black slate gray, the same cut as his plainclothes outfit), and bends over to pick up Fleur, who's now busy trying to groom your muttonchops (a doomed cause). She rapidly winds her way up onto his shoulders, and he makes a quick face that tells you he’d rather she hadn’t just made it quite so obvious how much _she’s_ in charge around here, before he deposits her up on the loft bed. 

“MWEH.”

“Mweh,” he answers her, drily.

He steps past you to retrieve his hat (he only has the one still, and it’s the one you gave him) from its hook by the door, opens the door, and then turns back to you, with what's as close as he gets to a shit-eating grin. “Make it to two years in recovery and I _might_ let you try a landing.” He waves the Frelon D31’s bulky remote control device in one hand - where he’s been hiding _that_ in his jacket, you have no idea. 

“Goals, partner.”

You stand up, and he’s used enough to surprise Ace’s Highs by now that he catches yours without a moment's hesitation.

There’s not really space to manage the Ace’s Low in the doorway, so you use the leftover momentum waving to the cat.

“See ya, Fleur.”

“MWEEEEH-EH- _EH!_ ”

Half a year and some change to go. You'll _stick_ that landing.


End file.
